Alternatives
Products that do what Kerns, an AI interface to understand anything, better than NotebookLM does
I'm building out Kerns, as an AI environment for research. You can seed a space with a topic and multiple source documents, and complete your research completely in one space. There's interactive mindmaps for exploration, podcast mode, powerful source readers with original plus chapter level summaries that let you zoom into source on demand, a powerful chat agent that lets you control context and cite refs, and AI assisted note taking. My goal is to have one place to do research on any topic which minimizes manual context engineering, and jumping around between chat/notes/readers.…
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Most research tools help you collect links. Kerns is built for ongoing research. You define topics and sources once. Kerns continuously tracks them over time, surfaces what changes, and structures the material so understanding compounds instead of resetting each session. The key difference is the interface layer. Beyond feeds and summaries, Kerns organizes research into reasoning-ready views—maps, structured summaries, and synthesized perspectives—so you can actually think through complex areas rather than just store information. We built this for people doing deep, long-running research…
Jan 2026 · kerns.ai
- 3AV
I feel like LLMs can help me understand anything. However, after I get a summary, I can't dive in to parts that I find interesting; can't refer to original source easily and can't control context with chatbots. This is an attempt to solve for a complete knowledge consumption experience with AI . Please give me feedback!
Oct 2025 · kerns.ai
- 4AA
Hey HN! Over the weekend (leaning heavily on Opus 4.5) I wrote Jargon - an AI-managed zettelkasten that reads articles, papers, and YouTube videos, extracts the key ideas, and automatically links related concepts together. Demo video: https://youtu.be/W7ejMqZ6EUQ Repo: https://github.com/schoblaska/jargon You can paste an article, PDF link, or YouTube video to parse, or ask questions directly and it'll find its own content. Sources get summarized, broken into insight cards, and embedded for semantic search. Similar ideas automatically cluster together. Each…
Dec 2025 · github.com
- 5EO
Hey HN! We’re Jorge and Will from Lotas (https://www.lotas.ai/), and we’ve built Erdos, a secure AI-powered data science IDE that’s fully open source (https://www.lotas.ai/erdos). A few months ago, we shared Rao, an AI coding assistant for RStudio (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44638510). We built Rao to bring the Cursor-like experience to RStudio users. Now we want to take the next step and deliver a tool for the entire data science community that handles Python, R, SQL, and Julia workflows. Erdos is a fork of VS Code designed for data…
Oct 2025 · lotas.ai
- 6WF
We have a dataset of 3,095 standardized AI responses across 43 prompts. From each response, we extract a 32-dimension stylometric fingerprint (lexical richness, sentence structure, punctuation habits, formatting patterns, discourse markers). Some findings: - 9 clone clusters (>90% cosine similarity on z-normalized feature vectors) - Mistral Large 2 and Large 3 2512 score 84.8% on a composite metric combining 5 independent signals - Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite writes 78% like Claude 3 Opus. Costs 185x less - Meta has the strongest provider "house style" (37.5x distinctiveness ratio) - "Satirical…
Apr 2026 · rival.tips
- 7VI
Most inference UIs that I've come across pretty much just give us a chat-like interface to toy around with models in a single visual conversation thread. Given the fact that we are limited to seeing only one output at a time, it's kind of hard to compare outputs from different models, adjustments made to the prompting, and sampler settings. But even when keeping the generation parameters the same (e.g., to test for reliability in the output) and just going for multiple passes, there is no easy way to have a side-by-side comparison to keep track of the outputs from the multiple "rounds". I…
2024 · github.com
- 8ET
I have tried journaling many times but nothing stuck. So I decided to make my own app for myself with these features: * Voice first * Private first * AI chat * Automatic tagging, meaning extraction, and semantic retrieval using embeddings stored locally * Export to LLM the AI angle is especially interesting for me. It allows me to ask questions like: * "remind me highlights and crazy nights in the last 3 months" * "How was I feeling during my trip in Spain and how big of a problem was my breakup" * "How would you judge my overall interactions with Marc after I told him about my problems" the…
Jul 2026 · echologue.com
- 9IP
To be specific, the content is generated by a GPT-2 based model. https://amzn.to/2TCc0v2 Let me know if you have any questions :-)
2020
- 10IM
This is the first version of an app idea I had last month as a way to dip my toes into some of the AI APIs. The idea is you can record yourself answering and rehearsing what you'll say to common interview questions, and receive AI feedback on how you did and how you can improve. In the future I may expand into other subject areas, but wanted to scope it to the behavioral interview format for the time being. Super open to feedback and suggestions!
2024 · apps.apple.com
- 11IB
As a high school student, I love LLMs and the execution of Apple's Appel Intelligence Writing Tools, but was disappointed that nothing like that existed for Windows. So, I created Writing Tools, a better than Apple Intelligence open-source alternative that works system-wide on Windows! Key features: - Uses Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash model for superior AI-assisted writing (much better than the tiny 2B parameter Apple Intelligence model) - Works in any application with a customizable hotkey - Proofreads, rewrites, summarizes, and more - Free and privacy-focused (your API key stays local, no…
2024 · github.com
- 12HA
Hi all, I find literature searches to be slow and despite all the tools nowadays, it is difficult to map out vast areas of research and then connect my ideas to what I’m trying to do (e.g. writing a review, learning something new, planning a new project, assignments, etc). Some of my peers and teachers also found this to be a problem so I built this MVP app to help people not only leverage AI search capabilities but also go on to connect their ideas, map out research projects, cite various results and organise their “stream of consciousness” as they work. I’d love to get some feedback on it…
2025 · hexle.ai
- 13CO
Hey HN! I’m Andrew, and I’ve been building Cortex (https://cortexdesktop.com/) for the last few weeks. Cortex is my attempt to reimagine how we interact with computers - starting with a simple interface, but aiming for something deeper: an AI layer over your OS that understands what you’re doing, remembers it, and helps you dynamically. Right now, Cortex is just a floating overlay you can summon anywhere on your Mac. It works like an inline ChatGPT, but it lets you instantly send that context into the chat by highlighting text - so you don’t have to explain what you’re doing.…
2025 · cortexdesktop.com
- 14IF
Hello there! I hope you're doing well today! I wanted to share something with you. Recently I was on the hunt for the best way to journal daily. Well, I had this idea - what if I could feed all my daily entries to an AI (ChatGPT), and create a friendly, supportive character like Socrates or Simon Sinek? This way, I could ask any questions about my life and mental health, and get some amazing advice on how to improve myself! The results have been absolutely mind-blowing ! I even made a short GIF to show you how it works - check it out! - https://gifyu.com/image/SdHLH I've…
2023
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I am working on an AI that uses multiple LLM based agents to do medical research on any topic you choose! The program terminates after a set number of iterations and all of the findings are saved. Still a work in progress but it is showing some promising results imho! Would love to receive any critical and constructive feedback, collaborate, Review your PRs, or discuss your ideas!!
2023 · github.com
- 16IB
Hey everyone! I recently built this little side project that takes any document you upload and turns it into practice quizzes using LLMs to generate the questions: https://www.cuiz-ai.com Being a backend engineer, I have always struggled to finish my side projects due to my awful frontend skills. Now, with the progress of AI coding tools, I had no more excuses. 100% of the frontend, landing page and even the logo was made using a combination of Cursor, ChatGPT and Claude, but it's always been under my supervision and never blindly accepted the proposed changes. The backend and…
2025
- 17BA
I'm building a workspace for doing focus work while also managing constant multi-tasking and context-switching that's required in a lot of roles. Currently this is done by using a notes system where we can split-screen AI chat, an object-based data table system for tracking entities, as well as viewing other documents. We can define agents directly from documents by giving instructions in plain language and then defining the trigger conditions. This helps automate workflows directly in the place where we're reading and writing content. I'm continuing to experiment with instructions and…
2025 · useportals.dev
- 18AV
I found myself jumping between ChatGPT, tabs, and docs, but never building real understanding. This is my attempt at fixing that — for researchers, curious readers, and lifelong learners. Would love your thoughts on the interface, and whether this would be useful in your own work or otherwise.
2025 · proread.ai
- 19OY
Hey HN, I pay for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and use Gemini through work. Four vendors, four separate conversation histories, four profiles of how I think. None of them talk to each other. Switch providers and you start over. So I built a system where the memory is mine. I run a knowledge graph in Postgres (Supabase, free tier) with pgvector for semantic search. A small MCP server reads and writes to it. That server sits behind an MCP Gateway on a $6/month VPS, along with Brave Search and a GitHub server. TypingMind connects to the gateway as a BYOK client -- any model, any device, same…
Mar 2026 · github.com
- 20AD
Hi all, I threw together a small prototype I am calling “Notepad.ai”. A new take on UIs for interacting with LLMs. While I enjoy using LLM’s in the chat format I wanted to see what it would be like to do it in a more long form style. It let’s you write in a pretty free form, much like Window’s Notepad, but you can choose to hit ctrl+[ to analyze the text with a preset prompt of your choosing. It has a few other small features. It’s WIP and very experimental. I would appreciate any feedback or thoughts. Video: https://youtu.be/ntdlgFmSxQY Live Demo:…
2024 · github.com
- 21IA
I like the idea of taking one thing and turning it into another—very much inspired by NotebookLM and wondered what it might take to generate full graphic novels, with consistent characters, narrative flow, story arc, etc. Developed a 7-pass scripting enrichment system (beat analysis, adaptation filtering, character deep dives) before generating any images. Dual backend: Google Gemini for scripting (2M context window) and either Gemini or OpenAI for image generation with 3-tier model fallback (comparing the performance of both). It's not great. Would love feedback on the pipeline.
Mar 2026 · arv.in
- 22MA
Hi HN, I'm a solo developer learning to code, and I'd love to share my second real project: MapMyLearn, an AI-powered app that automatically generates personalized learning paths based on any topic you input. What it does: Takes a topic (e.g. "history of capitalism", "learn Rust", or "data storytelling") Uses AI to break it down into a structured course with modules and submodules Each submodule includes: - Detailed, pedagogical content (developed based on online sources to mitigate hallucinations) - A quiz of 10 questions - Recommended resources - An AI chatbot for Q&A - Optional audio…
2025
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Hey Hacker News, I'm Nir, cofounder of Oboe (https://oboe.fyi), which we just launched publicly. Oboe lets anyone create a course out of a single prompt to learn about any topic. We're on a mission to democratize learning. We envision a future in which AI feeds us, making us smarter, and reignites the love of learning we all seem to have lost. Each course enables a variety of learning formats, letting you learn how you want, when you want. From deep dive articles to podcasts to games to quizzes. We want courses to feel lightweight and accessible, and to encourage following rabbit…
Sep 2025
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